It was a festive Saturday night for the Chicago Bulls. On the one hand, they honored six legendary members of the organization in their second annual Ring of Honor Ceremony. At the same time, they managed to eek by with a 121-120 victory over the lowly Washington Wizards.
Even though the general rule of thumb is a win being a win, that wasn’t enough for Bulls’ center Nikola Vucevic. He finished the game with a double-double of 28 points and 12 rebounds. However, in his post-game interview with K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Sports Network, he wasn’t having it , per Steph Noh of Sporting News.
When describing the Bulls’ performance, he called it “soft” through the first three quarters. In the fourth quarter, the Bulls came around to outscore the Wizards 29-22. Also, Matas Buzelis and Jalen Smith photobombed the interview with Vucevic, looking obviously annoyed. As Smith played around with him, he told him to stop and carried on with the interview.
“We didn’t do anything we talked about,” Vucevic said. “We played really soft, it was really bad. Obviously, we are happy we won, but we can’t keep doing this; it’s not sustainable. We have to be better.”
Dying at this Nikola Vucevic postgame interview after the Bulls stole a win against the Wizards pic.twitter.com/k4x73Tz8Mn
https://twitter.com/StephNoh/status/1992436564765593926?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1992436564765593926%7Ctwgr%5Ef7ddaa907ef513877c4207a1ec3578ab4724b25c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fclutchpoints.com%2Fnba%2Fchicago-bulls%2Fbulls-news-nikola-vucevic-satisfied-win-wizards
The Bulls trailed for most of the game until the fourth quarter. Ultimately, the energy wasn’t there overall, a number of the players were injured, and fatigue from playing five games in seven games started to set in.
Also, head coach Billy Donovan agreed with Vucevic in his post-game press conference that Chicago has to play consistently from start to finish.
“To Vooch’s point, it’s not sustainable to play half”
Bulls coach Billy Donovan agrees with Nikola Vucevic’s “soft” comment about the team after they eked out a 121-120 win over the Wizards.
“To Vooch’s point it’s not sustainable to play half” pic.twitter.com/JaEM4SIpve
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The Bulls come alive in the second half.
There have already been a few instances where the Bulls came out on top because of their second-half performance. The best example was their 24-point comeback win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Nov. 4, A game in which it was Vucevic who hit the game-winning three-pointer to give the Bulls their first lead with 3.2 seconds left.
Ultimately, they won 113-111. Plus, Chicago came together in the second half against the Denver Nuggets to win 130-127 last Monday. That included outscoring Denver 40-29 in the third quarter.
The Bulls have completed their run of playing five games in seven days. Altogether, they finished 3-2 during this stretch and are now 9-7 overall.
On Monday, the Bulls will travel to New Orleans to take on the Pelicans.
